[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":391},["ShallowReactive",2],{"globals:footer":3,"page:essay:foreword":40},{"address":4,"info":5,"links":17,"phone":26,"socialMediaLinks":27},"381 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10003\ncr@rauschenbergfoundation.org",[6],{"_key":7,"_type":8,"children":9,"markDefs":15,"style":16},"599e2a9f6700","block",[10],{"_key":11,"_type":12,"marks":13,"text":14},"bed078f5368d","span",[],"The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation builds on the legacy of artist Robert Rauschenberg, emphasizing his belief that artists can drive social change. Rauschenberg sought to act in the “gap” between art and life, valuing chance and collaboration across disciplines. As such, the Foundation celebrates new and even untested ways of thinking.",[],"normal",[18,22],{"_key":19,"label":20,"url":21},"fa4381e0935e","Terms and Conditions","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.rauschenbergfoundation.org\u002Ffoundation\u002Fterms-and-conditions",{"_key":23,"label":24,"url":25},"9384c6a8f419","Join Mailing List","https:\u002F\u002Frauschenbergfoundation.org\u002Fjoin-our-mailing-list","212.228.5283",[28,32,36],{"_key":29,"label":30,"url":31},"a261f817c586","Facebook","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.facebook.com\u002FRauschenbergFoundation",{"_key":33,"label":34,"url":35},"7b0ed283daed","Instagram","https:\u002F\u002Finstagram.com\u002Frauschenbergfoundation",{"_key":37,"label":38,"url":39},"2a80bf504b70","Vimeo","https:\u002F\u002Fvimeo.com\u002Frauschenbergfoundation",{"_createdAt":41,"_id":42,"_rev":43,"_system":44,"_type":47,"_updatedAt":48,"author":49,"authorBio":50,"body":64,"chronologyBody":64,"citeAs":65,"essayType":83,"paragraphStyle":84,"pdfUrl":64,"textOnlyBody":85,"title":373,"tocPreviewTitle":382,"uid":388},"2026-08-05T17:05:00Z","178307cf-9e75-406a-8e6f-fe4be505b30a","GgMg6vQPkGA1lTsJn4cWZt",{"base":45},{"id":42,"rev":46},"kC0HNR2GXmwmAbxNFM7xLT","essay","2026-10-22T15:27:21Z","Courtney J. Martin",[51],{"_key":52,"_type":8,"children":53,"markDefs":63,"style":16},"ca21441bf3bd",[54,59],{"_key":55,"_type":12,"marks":56,"text":58},"380f5e5e99e6",[57],"strong","Courtney J. Martin ",{"_key":60,"_type":12,"marks":61,"text":62},"c0f16efed131",[],"is the Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York",[],null,[66],{"_key":67,"_type":8,"children":68,"markDefs":82,"style":16},"b4f2f6adb068",[69,73,78],{"_key":70,"_type":12,"marks":71,"text":72},"1cd8261665be",[],"Courtney J. Martin, “Foreword,” ",{"_key":74,"_type":12,"marks":75,"text":77},"e29372d2a81a",[76],"em","Robert Rauschenberg: Paintings and Sculptures, 1948–1953",{"_key":79,"_type":12,"marks":80,"text":81},"75e2d0fc18bd",[],", Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2026, https:\u002F\u002Fcatalogue.rauschenbergfoundation.org\u002Fessays\u002Fforeword.",[],"text-only","indents",[86,103,127,135,203,288,342,350,365],{"_key":87,"_type":8,"children":88,"markDefs":102,"style":16},"63cc05715b14",[89,94,98],{"_key":90,"_type":12,"marks":91,"text":93},"14bb42e77307",[92],"forceUnindent","As this publication went live, on October 22, 2026, the yearlong celebration of the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg’s birth drew to a close. From its onset, upward of thirty exhibitions took place around the world, from Des Moines to East Hampton to Madrid to Kuala Lumpur, focusing on widely disparate aspects of Rauschenberg’s practice. Scores of articles were published, in mainstream outlets and the art press, reflecting on his career and its impact on generations of artists. The 2025 edition of miart, the Milan-based modern and contemporary art fair, took Rauschenberg as its curatorial inspiration. His work sparked a runway collection, by the American fashion designer Jason Wu. Choreography the artist created in 1963 for two dancers on roller skates (and one ",{"_key":95,"_type":12,"marks":96,"text":97},"63977a71d08d",[76,92],"en pointe",{"_key":99,"_type":12,"marks":100,"text":101},"2d035dec5c9a",[92],") was presented for the first time since 1966, in Brooklyn.",[],{"_key":104,"_type":8,"children":105,"markDefs":126,"style":16},"6998012524fe",[106,110,114,118,122],{"_key":107,"_type":12,"marks":108,"text":109},"9127874953a8",[],"Despite all that, and more, the release of this online publication is a unique milestone in Rauschenberg’s centennial year. In October 2025, Yale University Press, in association with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, published ",{"_key":111,"_type":12,"marks":112,"text":113},"807188a04790",[76],"I Don’t Think About Being Great: Selected Writings",{"_key":115,"_type":12,"marks":116,"text":117},"ae9e074503ca",[],", a collection of one hundred texts by the artist that greatly expands our understanding of what and how he thought not only about his own work but also more broadly, about the social and political issues of his day. In its pages, Rauschenberg is revealed to have been an engaged activist as well as an unstinting and humorous friend to many of his peers. This first installment of the Rauschenberg catalogue raisonné can be seen almost as a foil to that book—rather than his own ideas, here we get the scholarly summation of what, essentially, ",{"_key":119,"_type":12,"marks":120,"text":121},"eeb659ccf65c",[76],"others",{"_key":123,"_type":12,"marks":124,"text":125},"5ba6327c674a",[]," have thought and written in response to Rauschenberg’s earliest paintings and sculptures, created between the years 1948 and 1953. Here is a record of all the attempts art historians, critics, journalists, and writers of all stripes have made to comprehend the radical, chameleonic gestures Rauschenberg made in his art of this period, and of all the exhibitions, then and since then, that have granted the public a glimpse of the diverse output of Rauschenberg’s churning young mind.",[],{"_key":128,"_type":8,"children":129,"markDefs":134,"style":16},"138dde27cbfd",[130],{"_key":131,"_type":12,"marks":132,"text":133},"f64e73005615",[],"In other words, here is what the field of art history deems a “reasoned catalogue” of the work of the consummate master of “random order” (to borrow the title of a photo essay Rauschenberg published in 1963). A significant number of the works are published here for the first time, and the meticulously researched catalogue entries, in conjunction with seven newly commissioned essays, encourage a fresh consideration of all the artist’s early production, without the distraction of the better-known series that would soon follow and gain the artist international renown. Moreover, many of the works—more than a third—are no longer extant, whether lost, destroyed (intentionally or unintentionally), or painted over by the artist. These are the works that emerged from Rauschenberg’s earliest encounters with the serious art world, after a youth spent sketching for his peers’ amusement and designing clothes for his women friends and costumes for theater productions. Here, his imagination and ambition rub up against the formidable influences and anti-models he confronted in Kansas City, Paris, rural North Carolina, and, finally, New York. Far from cowed, he dipped and he dove, producing works that challenged the conventions not only of academic practice but also of the ascendant, now-canonical modernism that surrounded him first at Black Mountain College, in the person and philosophy of Josef Albers, and then in Manhattan, ruled by its phalanx of Abstract Expressionists.",[],{"_key":136,"_type":8,"children":137,"markDefs":199,"style":16},"9fc1835f697c",[138,142,146,150,155,159,163,167,171,175,179,183,187,191,195],{"_key":139,"_type":12,"marks":140,"text":141},"c2c049066221",[],"Some of the work may look familiar, or at least not unexpected, to those acquainted with Rauschenberg’s later oeuvre, particularly the early sculptures made of found materials, starting with ",{"_key":143,"_type":12,"marks":144,"text":145},"7d1defd21b30",[76],"Greenhouse",{"_key":147,"_type":12,"marks":148,"text":149},"96a12a16e594",[]," (1950; ",{"_key":151,"_type":12,"marks":152,"text":154},"a4eb0856fb77",[153],"b70eb69a2001","11",{"_key":156,"_type":12,"marks":157,"text":158},"ce37d40c86b1",[],"), and the early paintings with layered, collaged surfaces, often incorporating fragments of text and stray environmental matter, such as gravel and tar. The latter include his ",{"_key":160,"_type":12,"marks":161,"text":162},"e19e63869b95",[76],"Night Blooming",{"_key":164,"_type":12,"marks":165,"text":166},"479a0f8e5504",[]," and ",{"_key":168,"_type":12,"marks":169,"text":170},"c37fbff759c1",[76],"Black Painting",{"_key":172,"_type":12,"marks":173,"text":174},"2f9578474a69",[]," series, executed mostly between 1951 and 1953 at Black Mountain and in Rauschenberg’s first proper New York studio, at 61 Fulton Street, far downtown, near the seaport and fish market. These paintings and sculptures fit comfortably in the artist’s canon, revealing, it would seem, the same fascination with materials beyond traditional art media, with materials ",{"_key":176,"_type":12,"marks":177,"text":178},"b820a376fcb3",[76],"as",{"_key":180,"_type":12,"marks":181,"text":182},"273b422a3890",[]," materials, that so many of his later works do. But sometimes the staunch association of Rauschenberg with materials occludes other aspects of his practice—aspects that are, fundamentally,",{"_key":184,"_type":12,"marks":185,"text":186},"c37bcb5333fd",[76]," immaterial",{"_key":188,"_type":12,"marks":189,"text":190},"acbe1b05ce02",[],". I am speaking of his contrivance of strategies that can only be described as “conceptual,” very much ",{"_key":192,"_type":12,"marks":193,"text":194},"a22c0338d10e",[76],"avant la lettre",{"_key":196,"_type":12,"marks":197,"text":198},"11170bf49274",[],".",[200],{"_key":153,"_type":201,"crNo":202},"crLink","50.007",{"_key":204,"_type":8,"children":205,"markDefs":277,"style":16},"01fd17b5e154",[206,210,214,218,223,227,232,235,240,243,248,251,256,260,265,269,273],{"_key":207,"_type":12,"marks":208,"text":209},"da58c976845f",[],"Take the ",{"_key":211,"_type":12,"marks":212,"text":213},"62bd807395c2",[76],"White Paintings",{"_key":215,"_type":12,"marks":216,"text":217},"95cf89459e14",[],". These five works (",{"_key":219,"_type":12,"marks":220,"text":222},"f79cf2d6cbc1",[221],"1fe78d401c57","32",{"_key":224,"_type":12,"marks":225,"text":226},"59412710f81e",[],", ",{"_key":228,"_type":12,"marks":229,"text":231},"60ffa9897074",[230],"39774b9781c0","33",{"_key":233,"_type":12,"marks":234,"text":226},"33921e797d26",[],{"_key":236,"_type":12,"marks":237,"text":239},"4d7b95788389",[238],"10571f59e8dc","34",{"_key":241,"_type":12,"marks":242,"text":226},"1d1e19d2002e",[],{"_key":244,"_type":12,"marks":245,"text":247},"251f3648adaa",[246],"e09a9454a1db","35",{"_key":249,"_type":12,"marks":250,"text":226},"e09a3c112836",[],{"_key":252,"_type":12,"marks":253,"text":255},"97e77c737ae0",[254],"1c32bf2afb3a","36",{"_key":257,"_type":12,"marks":258,"text":259},"80b64a8a3aa5",[],"), created in 1951, consist of white house paint applied to one or more rectangular or square canvases with as little trace of the painter’s hand as possible. From the beginning, Rauschenberg did not insist on his own physical fabrication of the works; Cy Twombly helped paint the original examples at Black Mountain. In a letter to the gallerist Betty Parsons in October 1951, Rauschenberg wrote, “It is completely irrelevant that I am making them—",{"_key":261,"_type":12,"marks":262,"text":264},"14bd1f620039",[263],"underline","Today",{"_key":266,"_type":12,"marks":267,"text":268},"bb0d0281ea15",[]," is their creator.” Describing the moment of their inception, he told an interviewer in 1966, “After I painted one, two, three, and four of the white ones, I jumped to an arbitrary large number, which would imply that they could just go on and on.” These are highly conceptual gestures, before we even get to the fact that the artist, in the interest of keeping the works pristine, repainted and had others repaint them multiple times over the years, always keeping 1951 as their date of creation. In 1965, for an exhibition at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Rauschenberg sent a page of diagrams and written instructions to the museum’s director, Pontus Hultén, so that the works could be fabricated in Sweden rather than shipped from the United States. ",{"_key":270,"_type":12,"marks":271,"text":272},"3017ce6f889a",[76],"Instructions",{"_key":274,"_type":12,"marks":275,"text":276},"c272186247fc",[],"—the conceptual gesture par excellence.",[278,280,282,284,286],{"_key":221,"_type":201,"crNo":279},"51.003",{"_key":254,"_type":201,"crNo":281},"51.002",{"_key":230,"_type":201,"crNo":283},"51.006",{"_key":238,"_type":201,"crNo":285},"51.005",{"_key":246,"_type":201,"crNo":287},"51.004",{"_key":289,"_type":8,"children":290,"markDefs":336,"style":16},"8e15372bc285",[291,295,299,303,308,312,317,321,324,328,332],{"_key":292,"_type":12,"marks":293,"text":294},"6e6768ff1899",[],"Other works of this period are equally conceptual in nature. ",{"_key":296,"_type":12,"marks":297,"text":298},"8b84c57b3bc3",[76],"Erased de Kooning Drawing",{"_key":300,"_type":12,"marks":301,"text":302},"db4c24d39e30",[]," (",{"_key":304,"_type":12,"marks":305,"text":307},"4cb9222f21db",[306],"fa55bc7a90c7","105",{"_key":309,"_type":12,"marks":310,"text":311},"86a4e53a63f3",[],") is probably the most famous example. As Helen Molesworth recounts in detail in ",{"_key":313,"_type":12,"marks":314,"text":316},"b08fef51489e",[315],"ec84efcc78e3","her essay",{"_key":318,"_type":12,"marks":319,"text":320},"b7667fdd2ea2",[],", Rauschenberg knocked on Willem de Kooning’s door one evening and asked the older artist to give him a drawing, free of charge, for the express purpose of erasing it. While there is clearly an intense materiality to the careful erasing process that followed, there is no denying that, in this case, the idea was the thing. Decades later, Rauschenberg countered the suggestion that ",{"_key":322,"_type":12,"marks":323,"text":298},"156d7c00c3e5",[76],{"_key":325,"_type":12,"marks":326,"text":327},"2c357c5c574a",[]," was a “kind of negation” by saying, “No. Like, neither is the ",{"_key":329,"_type":12,"marks":330,"text":331},"6721f4658864",[76],"White Painting",{"_key":333,"_type":12,"marks":334,"text":335},"583d2f68e891",[],". It’s not a negation, it’s a celebration. It’s just the idea.” Rauschenberg did not need anyone to lay the groundwork for him to engage in such conceptual operations and call them art. He had the courage of his convictions, despite being so young, so green, in that Manhattan milieu. Somehow he came up with this stuff. He was not an early adopter but a pioneer—not unlike his heroes the Wright brothers, or the astronauts he admired from the 1960s on.",[337,339],{"_key":306,"_type":201,"crNo":338},"53.D001",{"_key":315,"_type":340,"href":341},"link","https:\u002F\u002Fcatalogue.rauschenbergfoundation.org\u002Fessays\u002Ferased-de-kooning",{"_key":343,"_type":8,"children":344,"markDefs":349,"style":16},"233a02608ec0",[345],{"_key":346,"_type":12,"marks":347,"text":348},"da01a111432a",[],"It is necessary revisions such as the foregoing, to the received wisdom of art history, that catalogues raisonnés are singularly positioned to support. We can see all the work laid out, and we can weigh it in the scales supplied by the latest developments in and best practices of our field of study, as well as those afforded by our own intellectual and political principles, our particular time and place. Concurrently, the catalogue raisonné equips us, as closely as possible, to understand the discursive context in which an artist produced their work—what ideas its audience brought to bear on it, what other works were brought into conversation with it (whether the artist was paying attention or not)—and the contexts in which the work was received in later periods.",[],{"_key":351,"_type":8,"children":352,"markDefs":364,"style":16},"fdf132ab822a",[353,357,360],{"_key":354,"_type":12,"marks":355,"text":356},"c5afdc117aac",[],"A catalogue raisonné also shows, to the degree that can be firmly traced, who or what has owned an artist’s works from the time of their inception to the present day. In the case of these early Rauschenbergs, so many have been lost that the repositories of the surviving examples tell a story in themselves. That the Cy Twombly Foundation still owns four of the works (of the thirteen Twombly himself owned at one point or another during his lifetime) is a direct reflection of the two artists’ intimate personal and working relationship during the years covered by this publication. The Menil Collection, Houston, which owns five of the works and is promised two more, owes its cache to the early championing of Rauschenberg by John and Dominique de Menil, who met the artist in person and purchased their first work by him in the early 1960s. About twenty years later, Dominique hired Walter Hopps, a curator deeply committed to Rauschenberg, as their museum’s inaugural director. The retrospective Hopps organized in 1976 for the National Collection of Fine Arts (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., traveled the following year to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which had been given its first work by Rauschenberg five years earlier. The museum acquired a number of works over the next two decades, mostly editions on paper and photographs; then, in 1998, it purchased fourteen seminal works from the artist’s own collection, largely through a gift from a longtime trustee, Phyllis C. Wattis. Six of those works, including ",{"_key":358,"_type":12,"marks":359,"text":298},"20b1a7822554",[76],{"_key":361,"_type":12,"marks":362,"text":363},"a53b7ef8b222",[],", appear in this catalogue. Besides the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, SFMOMA holds the largest collection of the artist’s pre-1954 paintings and sculptures.",[],{"_key":366,"_type":8,"children":367,"markDefs":372,"style":16},"ab6e02a0fcf2",[368],{"_key":369,"_type":12,"marks":370,"text":371},"f2584e281502",[],"All of this is to say that these early works by Rauschenberg ended up in particular places for particular reasons, often very personal ones. Some—those now cared for by the Foundation—he kept his entire life. Then again, some he may or may not have thrown into the Arno, after a badly reviewed exhibition in Florence. In the 1963 essay mentioned earlier, “Random Order,” Rauschenberg referred to an “extrem[e]ly complex random order that cannot be described as accidental.” Random, but not accidental—here perhaps is the true through line of this publication.",[],[374],{"_key":375,"_type":8,"children":376,"markDefs":381,"style":16},"444bd9cdee17",[377],{"_key":378,"_type":12,"marks":379,"text":380},"c896705b9c4a",[],"Foreword",[],[383],{"_key":375,"_type":8,"children":384,"markDefs":387,"style":16},[385],{"_key":378,"_type":12,"marks":386,"text":380},[],[],{"_type":389,"current":390},"slug","foreword",1792773429287]